This is the look of the wooded areas along Rt. 2, near Island Falls, Maine.

I’m now in northern Maine, and I’ve learned there’s been a new Mystery Cat sighting from up this way.

An Island Falls restaurant owner said that he and his wife saw a panther cross the road in front of them, coming out from a field in an area locally called Barker Ridge, between Island Falls and Sherman, onto Rt. 2.

The photograph above shows the area going up to May Mountain, which is northeast of the sighting area. May Mt overlooks Mattawamkeag Lake, which is a five-minute drive from the encounter location.

The sighting occurred late Tuesday night, July 1, 2008, only four days ago. The informant also mentioned that someone they know saw a panther a few nights earlier, just a few miles away from the site of this sighting.

The restaurant owner stated that the panther was “so black that it was blacker than the night.”

He said that it was “about the size of our Labrador retriever.”

The observed “black panther” was “long in body and had a very long tail.”

Island Falls is in Aroostook County, in northern Maine, near the Canadian border.

The restaurant name is The Horn of Plenty. The eyewitness was the owners, Bill Rodderick and his wife Nancy Levin.

Search for tracks and other signs is underway.

No reports of dead or missing livestock have been heard.

Stay tuned.

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About Loren ColemanLoren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct).
Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015.
Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.

I hunt deer every year, and I would have problems seeing or identifying just about anything in that bit of brush. The only thing helpful there is there maybe something to reference size from. But if you look at it, there are plenty of places where such a creature (whether a black panther or not) can hide, dodge in and out and completely get called the wrong animal. I do hope there’s something up there for your trouble.

I’m normally one to give people the benefit of the doubt, but there’s just something about this particular “sighting” that reeks of wanton publicity mongering.

Someone they knew had a sighting a few days before? They own a restaurant in an already beautiful area that could only become more popular with swarming cryptotourists should a sighting of a cryptid felid occur? Do the math. Cha-ching.

I sincerely hope that I am wrong, and that this sighting is legitimate, and that these individuals can prosper in their endeavors, just not under false pretenses.

That being said, I think it is a great idea on Loren’s part to withhold the individual’s names and the name of their establishment. If people frequent the area and their restaurant by chance of being in the area, great, but if this alleged sighting was an attempt to LURE people there by fabricating a sighting, for shame……

This is a case of a casual conversation between the restaurant owner and the woman whom owns the land on which the black panther was seen. The woman of Barker Ridge then contacted John Lutz, asking about black panther sightings in Maine. Lutz contacted me and I backtracked to the informant and eyewitnesses.

There was absolutely NO attempt on the part of the original eyewitnesses to get any publicity, and this “cha-ching” theory is complete nonsense, if not insulting to those folks. Anyway, no one in their right mind goes to that part of Aroostook County as a tourist, and the couple just happens to own a restaurant. It was mentioned as a description of the eyewitnesses, not as bait to get you to go there.